You know the stories: The Top Ten Mutual Funds to Buy Now, How to Double Your Money This Year, personality profiles that read like fan magazines. Stock-touting pieces that praise any path to profits. We've all done these stories, in one form or another. It's investment pornography — soft core, not hard core, but pornography all the same.

The challenge is made more difficult in the US by the large number of publications offering "hot'' investments claiming returns of more than 20% a year. He describes this as "investment pornography which gets clients excited and confused''.

The use of ads on cable TV is an "alarming wrinkle" because many people believe whatever they see on the tube, Feigen says. He called such commercials "investment pornography," and says television and radio stations ought to be doing a better job of keeping them off the air.